Frida Kahlo
Now that's a thesis someone should write.
Not me of course, paganism, neo or paleo, is not my forte - even though I dabbled in the occult in my hippie days, at the dawning of the Aquarian Age and all of that smokey stuff. Now days many people do more than dabble - they plunge right in. In our times the prophecy from the Book of Revelation appears to be realized: "All are made drunk from the cup of the whore of Babylon."
Yesterday, commenting on the Caitlyn Jenner Vanity Fair cover story, I said I was surprised that radical feminists weren't slashing themselves over Caitlyn's glamorous Hollywood debut. I had in mind the Baal-priests and prophets of Jezebel in the time of Elijah [1 Kings 18]. I added the following analogy of why superficial transition based upon gender-stereotype may actually be more tolerant to feminist ideology than one might think.
The Beast
Trans-idolatry.
I wrote, if Jenner goes through with sexual reassignment surgery - genital surgery, it seems to me that might herald a sort of feminist victory over patriarchal dominance, thus rendering Jenner's chosen gender-stereotype more tolerable. I think cutting the male genitalia can be considered as a sort of homage to ancient, matriarchal, origin metaphors connected to menstruation; making the transition a sort of blood ritual, an emasculation ritual far more extreme than circumcision, which ancient pagan cults connected to Goddess worship.* (Likewise, the gender-mutilation of female to male transition, hearkens back to various menstrual myth and metaphor in ancient cultures, such as the pregnant male myth and aspects of lycanthropy. A deeper study of which would most likely link gender-theory to therianthropy. Like I said - it is not my area of expertise.)
Caitlyn
I wanted to highlight my observation to connect with an article I discovered today, written by Bevil Bramwell, OMI, discussing The Return of the (Pagan) Gods. I believe it ties into what I have been trying to express concerning post-Christian Western culture and the strange adaptations we are witnessing.
119th Division - Richard Lindner
False religion - apostasy - draws people away from the religion of the true God.
A modern historian would have to labor to get a grip on the soup of religious ideas and practices that existed in the first century at the very dawn of Christianity. Yet the modern world is reviving precisely that as it progressively detaches itself from Christianity. Those ideas and practices are inspired by evil spirits now, even as they were then. In the West today, many behaviors might not be called religious, but by their power over individuals and their fixed routines, and their centrality in the life of many individuals, that’s what in reality they are.
One obvious modern worship is the adoration of Priapus. That “god’s” attributes do not need to be detailed here. But a whole industry of medications is devoted to the worship of Priapus by men who do not have a medical condition requiring medication. You can’t escape it: Ads are plastered all over TV.[...]
False religions draw people away from the religion of the true God. When we paid more attention to what the Bible actually says rather than what we want it to say, we read: “all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary.”(Psalm 96:5-6)
Idols even distort the appearance of the true religion. They soak up time, energy, and moral commitment, leaving much less for the real thing. It is as if the denial of the true God redounds upon its idolaters in real time.
And there are even worse consequences: “reason itself is slow and hesitant in determining the course of action to be followed; it loses its sensitivity for what is truly human good and compromises with material interests. The will becomes pathologically self-seeking, absorbed in asserting the individual’s own rights and blind to the rights of others. Man’s sensual powers which should cooperate with and make more profoundly human the decisions of the virtuous man initiate a separatist movement and seek for autonomous satisfaction.” (Colman O’Neill O.P.) - The Catholic Thing
The Whore
*It strikes me as no small coincidence that the Church of England now appears to be tending toward a sort of Magna Mater cult in it's development of doctrine:
Support is growing within the Church of England to rewrite its official liturgy to refer to God as female following the selection of the first women bishops. - Read more here.
The Great Mother cult is the primal archetype of Goddess worship.
H/T Spirit Daily for Return of the Pagan Gods article.
